Erosion of civil liberties
Nov. 19th, 2016 01:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtbcIn accordance with this year's miserable theme, here in the UK the Investigatory Powers Act has passed. My tea-making technique probably already had Orwell spinning in his grave. Among other provisions, the Act requires ISPs to record customers'
I don't think that governments can be trusted and it has been repeatedly shown that large databases of juicy information tend to leak sooner or later. I'd rather risk increased terrorism to avoid the abuses of power that come when authoritarians fear protest, criticism and minorities. I greatly value privacy and in Britain it is generally the corresponding facets of their policy platform that cause me to consider voting for Liberal Democrats. It isn't only those who do wrong who have anything to fear, it is anybody who is considered bothersome by any agent of the powers that be, even if the status quo deserves upsetting. Without privacy, judgment and consequences prevent one from even curiously courting various ideas: we lose freedom. Even without provable guilt one's life can be blighted through one's private activity being revealed.
Over the past couple of decades it is striking how easily privacy protections have been eroded without the populace appearing to much care; I haven't even heard a Liberal Democrat talking about those policy planks. Leaving the European Union with an essentially unopposed Conservative government will only accelerate the loss of civil liberties. More generally, I am perhaps now among many who wonder where I may live where people actually share my value system. If I pay by cash (and then don't give my zip code!) it doesn't mean that I have anything to hide, it just means that I don't think that my purchasing habits are any of your business.
It is an interesting thought experiment to consider how to make it much harder to determine my Internet usage habits. It would take some effort and money but, in the days of companies all over the world being happy to rent me brief time on virtual instances in their clouds, and with much of my usage being quite low bandwidth, it would be quite feasible; the awkward part is the latency that comes of attempting to avoid temporal correlation of the genuine traffic among the noise of the other activity among which hides my own. Even a weak signal can be teased out of enough metadata capture. I don't have the resources to pursue such a double-edged project at present but on balance I think that kind of subversion quite worthwhile.
internet connection records: the police and others may see them without a warrant and the customer is not informed. So much for checks and balances.
I don't think that governments can be trusted and it has been repeatedly shown that large databases of juicy information tend to leak sooner or later. I'd rather risk increased terrorism to avoid the abuses of power that come when authoritarians fear protest, criticism and minorities. I greatly value privacy and in Britain it is generally the corresponding facets of their policy platform that cause me to consider voting for Liberal Democrats. It isn't only those who do wrong who have anything to fear, it is anybody who is considered bothersome by any agent of the powers that be, even if the status quo deserves upsetting. Without privacy, judgment and consequences prevent one from even curiously courting various ideas: we lose freedom. Even without provable guilt one's life can be blighted through one's private activity being revealed.
Over the past couple of decades it is striking how easily privacy protections have been eroded without the populace appearing to much care; I haven't even heard a Liberal Democrat talking about those policy planks. Leaving the European Union with an essentially unopposed Conservative government will only accelerate the loss of civil liberties. More generally, I am perhaps now among many who wonder where I may live where people actually share my value system. If I pay by cash (and then don't give my zip code!) it doesn't mean that I have anything to hide, it just means that I don't think that my purchasing habits are any of your business.
It is an interesting thought experiment to consider how to make it much harder to determine my Internet usage habits. It would take some effort and money but, in the days of companies all over the world being happy to rent me brief time on virtual instances in their clouds, and with much of my usage being quite low bandwidth, it would be quite feasible; the awkward part is the latency that comes of attempting to avoid temporal correlation of the genuine traffic among the noise of the other activity among which hides my own. Even a weak signal can be teased out of enough metadata capture. I don't have the resources to pursue such a double-edged project at present but on balance I think that kind of subversion quite worthwhile.
